Porridge

ONE POEM – Lauren Bender

points for you if you are boss of the building, every lock
warm at your fingertips, every door’s soft click
yours as it shuts, every window with your face
reflected in it.

ONE POEM – Richard Brostoff

Above the house a low sun like a wrecking ball,
the world at the horizon splintered like a Rothko

ONE POEM – Stephen House

i order a long black
he looks at me
man on man gaze

i smile

TWO POEMS – Natalie Crick

I want to feel
the warm milk of your smile.
I want to see your reflection
in the moon’s mirror, polished like spring bones.

PHOTOGRAPHY – Charlie Speck

Beautiful photographic studies of the outdoors in black and white.

POETRY – Chavonne Brown

She was not like unwitting prey,
That had never sighted the lion;
She fled from him, knowing
As she did what it meant…

TWO POEMS – Nadia Patterson

i’d put stickers all over the moon
and hang it from the ceiling
in the living room

5 COLLAGE POEMS – J.I. Kleinberg

sunshine snacked on
a little
morning

ONE POEM – A. Martine

Brown girl: you don’t get a plot twist. Your story’s been penned
with strokes as hollow as they are spiteful

ONE POEM – Ian C. Smith

For those who forego the languor of home ground, that lethal rapine of routine, the most compelling sound of the travelling life might be a ferry’s foghorn throughout the night

COMFORT FOODS // Tortang Talong — Sadia Pineda Hameed

I receive a call from my mother. It is to tell me a recipe for tortang talong, which she learnt last night in a dream.

ONE POEM – Emily Barker

A drunk girl came up to me in a club last week and told me, yet again, that I look exactly, no, exACtly–Sarah! Come over here! Doesn’t she look exACtly like our Hannah?

ONE POEM – Clifford Brooks

Vacant of leaves
and shell-wrapped gifts,
dad and I can see the sky.

ONE POEM – Linda M. Crate

the fox and i
shared one glance
i think about it all the time

ONE POEM – Jack B. Bedell

and as soon as I touched the freezer’s handle,
the tar wall behind it rippled.

ONE POEM – Maura Way

I’m ready for the ritual
where I get crowned a
crone.

ONE POEM – Ben von Jagow

While I sleep
pygmy elephants
journey across my bedroom floor.

ONE POEM – Anne Gill

In lattie we held martinis,
un-clobbered each other –
left our cats on the floor in nishta.

What Makes a Proper Yorkshire Brew? – Lucinda Maitra

Rather than a distant past we can simply overcome or attempt to forget, our relationship to the historical atrocities of violent imperialism is difficult and clearly far from over, despite attempts to suggest otherwise.

Feeling Myself – Dolly Church

When my body was made up of straight lines it felt boyish and uninteresting, and when those lines finally bent, they felt uncontrollable.

COMFORT FOODS // Mammaw’s Christmas Eve Chili Recipe – Parker Anderson

Every year, while the people who crowd around the Christmas Eve table might change, the chili is always just as delicious, and just as cheap to make.

An Argument with a Photographer: Thoughts on Autofiction – Alice Attlee

How would it be to find oneself reflected as “both handsome and unexceptional”, or find one’s back captured unawares from behind, “broad and fleshy, leathery with sun and age, and marked with numerous moles and scars”?

ONE POEM – Fran Root

Their guitars stand somewhere in an empty room on American soil
Dust spots in the sun settle on their strings

An interview with Claudia Knight

Born in the heart of the Black Country, Claudia Knight is predominantly a writer who is exploring the capabilities of her creativity after moving to London and discovering the freedom in taking more risks in life. Having discovered the endless possibilities when creating digital art, her bold yet simple pieces explore her relationship with herself, her body…

TWO POEMS – Paul McCarrick

The moon will not go down again,
street lights will be on forever and drive
electricity bills into walls with no seatbelts

ONE POEM – Anna Nightingale

when a father is a control bar
made of wood

and the strings snap
the puppets fall

Killer (non)fictions: Is true crime miscommunicating truths in favour of entertaining audiences? – C.S. Barnes

C.S. Barnes is a Worcester-based author and academic. She lectures in Creative Writing and English literature at various universities around the West Midlands, and her research background lies in representations of women in crime fiction. She also writes fiction and her work is published by Bloodhound Books. . True crime, by its very titling, leads…

TWO POEMS – Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Their heads out, curved eyes on us,
reciprocating the salty, convex cabin.
Look, there, beautiful wooden bowling balls, said my mum.

SHORT STORY – Tamara Lazaroff

My grandfather who was not gay was born in 1930 in Seville, Andalusia. He worked as an itinerant labourer for the señoritos, the rich landlords, tending their olive trees and their domesticated animals.

THREE POEMS – Satya Dash

There are days when my body is a forest of old pines ailing and wailing in unison

COMFORT FOODS // Dissecting the Heart of Mandu – J.A. Pak

Dissecting the Heart of Mandu The Chinese, Mongolians, Japanese, and now the Americans and Europeans are in my food, but are the Turkic nomads there as well? Intriguing and exciting. A mandu (만두) is a Korean dumpling. A savory dumpling with a filling of meat. It’s usually boiled but it can also be steamed, pan-fried,…

A Corpus Stylistics Study of the Biased Narrative Voice in Jane Eyre – Yifan Zhai

Yifan Zhai is a young critic from Beijing. She is currently pursuing an MA in English Literature in Beihang University, China. She used to be in an exchange program to the St.Mary’s University of Texas, USA, where she developed an interest in studying and criticizing literature. Her focus is reading the classics with new…

TWO POEMS – Nick Chlopicki

the future is ready for

our, now available,

technological improvement

ONE POEM – Paul Robert Mullen

douse it douse it douse it
strike a match and freeze the scene

Body Positivity and Fat Acceptance – Changing the World to Suit Personal Grievances? – Catherine Drysdale

I originally wanted to write an article about how different diets suit different people, and how breaking away from my father’s belief in the Atkins diet and doing my own research was liberating for me. I had hoped that those reading this article would find a similarly freeing effect, and it would give them hope…